They Turned the Lights On

God said "let there be light," according to Genesis, and there was light. And God called the light "day" and the darkness "night." Light and day remained synonymous, or practically so, from Paleolithic times until the 19th century, when the invention of electric light, and the electrical delivery systems that went with it, changed everything. Until then, human activity was severed between the natural cycles of light and dark, helped along, at night, by whatever flickering flames could be coaxed from...